Joshua Helling
Forum Replies Created
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Yes you can do this. The problem before was that we always could install two cards, but most applications would only see the first card. (including our control panel).
With the old Intensity boards this was not a problem as there were no settings to configure.
Later on (I think over a year ago now) we added the ability for our control panel to see multiple cards as well. There should be a drop down in which you can select which board you want to control.
After that, you need a software that will capture from two sources. There are several and we don’t make any specific recommendations, but you can use softtron amongst other softwares to do this.
Be aware that NO software that Blackmagic Design bundles is capable of capturing from two sources simultaneously. That includes On-Air, which would only capture 1 stream.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hello,
I will try to answer your questions.
1> It will not take component RGB, but will capture Y,Cb,Cr (or Y,Pb,Pr). There is no HDCP over component and we won’t stop you from capturing that signal in HD over analog. HDMI would be a problem due to HDCP.
2> While we haven’t tested it specifically, both the Intensity Pro and the Intensity Shuttle work off the same interface (as do all of our boards) which means it should plug right in and work the same. Again, we haven’t tested, but it should work the same.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
No way of extending it unless you have a cable custom made. Which will likely be extremely problematic. The External PCI-express spec I think allows for theoretical lengths of 10 meters, but I know there is alot of complex stuff that goes into that. Things we haven’t developed or tested, and it most likely will not work with a passive cable (such as we provide).
That said, it is probably far easier to put the computer by the rack and extend the DVI to the monitor and get an active USB cable to for the keyboard and mouse. This has the benefit of using inexpensive, proven tech and also moves the computer and attached storage away from the user for a more lovely computing experience.
Well, that’s how I’d do it anyways.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hey Bob,
I will try to answer these.
1) can I use this forum to complain about Blackmagic Opengear ?
A. I think so. I don’t have a problem with it, and certainly welcome the feedback.2) the only “manual” is on the https://www.blackmagic-design.com website, and it is an overview manual, not specifics on each card.
A. Yeah, we’ve heard this a few times in support. We’d also like to see more thorough manuals but it is largely felt that these devices are simple enough and that the silk screening on the back of the boards should be all you need to set the device appropriately.3) how do you use the mini USB connector on the edge of the cards – what is the proceedure ?
A. They are there for the same reason they are there on the regular mini converters. That is to do firmware upgrades. There is one exception. The port on the mini converters is aslo used to control the device from the computer control panel, where as the openGear devices use the Dashboard.4) can the OpenGear cards be used in both 10 and 20 slot frames – are they the same backplane connectors ?
A. Nope, only the 20 frame chassis. This is because the openGear backplanes are different between the 10 and 20 slot chassis and are not compatible. Geeky reasons for this are as follows.
-On the boards that have normal backplanes we need more ports, in other words the only openGear mini converter that could be used in a 1 slot arrangement is the sync generator.
-There are several boards that use an “open hole” design (such as the HDMI-SDI, SDI-HDMI) in which case the connectors are actually fixed to the PCB itself (and not the backplane) and so they need a different style of blanks.5) why do dealers like B&H sell Blackmagic Opengear chassis, but Blackmagic does not even describe this on their own website ?
A. Ah…this is tricky. Said simply. The openGear chassis are not our product. They are made by Ross, we just badge them. So in a sense we act as distributor, but we don’t typically sell them to end users, we sell them to dealers (which is not so different from our normal channel), but because it is not a Blackmagic Design made product we don’t put it on our website.And you are correct, the 8321 is the only currently supported chassis.
I hope this helps to clarify.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
That’s odd. Seems that you have it setup exactly right. You need to make sure that your project is set to the capture format that you ultimately want. So the SD will come in to the board, get converted and should go to premiere as you HD format.
Can you detail that in an email and send it to our support office support-usa@blackmagic-design.com so that we can reproduce this?
Please include the system specs above as well as your source specifics and what project settings you have tried that failed.
Again, if you switch to a SD format and you see input the something is definitely not right.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
While we haven’t done this with that particular camera, we have done this exact thing with other cameras. So I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.
I would probably confirm with the camera manufacturer that it can output for extended periods of time in this mode without enabling the demo mode. The demo mode (which is typically used in stores) will change the output of the camera to a screen saver of sorts when the record function is not being used. So if you let it sit long enough it will start outputting a screen save. This wouldn’t be good. But typically this can be disabled in the menu. Just might be worth confirming.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Okay cool,
If you can do it every time then we should try to recreate it, which depending on system differences may or may not be easy.
Of course you can email to our office here in the states (just be aware of the time differences) and we will be glad to check it out, and report it.
And suffice to say yes there are bugs in our bug tracker logged against Adobe CS5 to be fixed. When you email into us we will check your issue against our database and hopefully it’s already in there, but if not, we’ll put it in there.
Also thanks for the system specs, can you make sure to mention what GFX card you are using in the email?
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Good points Brian,
To Mandeep
There are many converter softwares out there, including the adobe encoder which you can use directly from the timeline. Starting off with HD will typically yield better results typically because you are starting with a better quality.
But be aware, the encoding part, or rather how you go about encoding is probably the most important part of this step. All the quality of the source in the world won’t mean a thing if it’s not encoded properly.
Typically when starting with HD and converting to SD you want to make sure you know WHAT you are expecting out of the finished product. Example: What do you want the Aspect to be, Anamorphic, Cropped (pan and scan 4:3), letterboxed (4:3)? They will all yield different results.
Also if you are doing this for burn to DVD give good thought to the size of your file. If it’s more than about 4.3 GB you might want to consider burning on DVD9 (approx 9 GB of space), but for that you’d need a dual layer burner (very common you might have one already). But know this and understand this, because if the project is long sometimes people tend to overcompress in order to fit it onto a standard DVD.
So make sure you understand what you want to deliver and make the right settings, and you’ll deliver a good product.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Well,
Probably the first thing to do would be to contact support in your region and report those issues. Of course there are always bugs in early releases of software, on both Adobe and Blackmagic’s side. And we work to fix those as quickly as possible.
When you do reach out to us, we will ask what type of hardware you are running and confirm that you are using one of the supported nVidia cards certified for use with the Mercury playback engine.
A couple of notes about crash logs and culprit files. It’s important to note that the file that is reported is typically just a file that was in use when the crash occurred. In the case of the Decklink.dll, if you are outputting through the board that file is in use. So it’s not always the case that that particular DLL caused the crash, merely that it was being used.
Also the MSVCR90.DLL is a dll that exists on all windows systems and is written by Microsoft. It’s a standard library.
On performance differences between Adobe native timelines and Blackmagic timelines, the rules haven’t changed here. Adobe is able to scale back the preview complexity in order to show more realtime performance. Because our boards require full frame rate full resolution in order to output the frame it will seem that it doesn’t perform as well. This was the same in CS4, but without the mercury engine accelerating the timeline. Certainly if something is wrong we want to address it, but it is normal to see two equivalent timelines (BMD/Adobe) perform differently.
On Mac plugins, they are in BETA and are being publically distributed in order to get that out there, and we know there is work to be done. So again, you should contact your local support office in order to report these issues so we can get the issues logged for fixing.
I’m not laying blame, or downplaying any of these issues. We’d love to address all the issues, but the road to that starts with contacting our offices.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Using the Intensity would give you access to an Intensity Output option within After Effects.
So you would be able to use this to output both your FCP and AE timelines to your monitor via HDMI directly.
What you would NOT be able to do with it is use the Intensity output as an extended desktop.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.